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I.
I was not "picked out" like my siblings. They were more brightly colored than I was, more friendly, more willing to be manhandled and carried around. My solid black coat and golden eyes did not help my case, chasing the superstitious-minded further away. So one by one my siblings were picked out and plucked away from my mother and I, the spotted ones and the calicos, and soon I was the only kitten left.
So, no, I was not "picked out," as there were none left to choose but me.
I recalled that my first time meeting her was strange, as she did not attempt to pick me up nor stroke my fur when she arrived into my tiny room, unlike all the others. She did not yelp or fuss or complain when I hid from her under the couch, glaring out with mistrustful eyes. In fact, she scarcely looked at me, simply holding out a pale, upturned hand for me to sniff.
At length I came out from under the couch, wary, ready to take a swipe at her if she tried picking me up. She did nothing more than give a slight wiggle of her fingers, attracting my attention again. I smelled cautiously at her, ears pricked forward. She smelled pleasant, I noticed: vaguely metallic in the background, but something floral at the forefront, and with a sharp, clean scent somewhere in the middle.
My whiskers brushed her skin as I crept warily closer and she laughed softly at the tickle, finally turning her head to look at me. She was equally pale in the face, her hair black as my own, her amber eyes just a few shades darker than mine.
She would do, I decided, bumping my cheek into her hand. Her smile was lovely.
II.
She called me Macaroon, which she told visitors she picked because I was so sweet. The explanation has always amused me, as I spent my early days in her home fleeing her and her mate—a big and loud fellow who didn't seem willing to let me exist without picking me up or stroking me too roughly—and causing her all sorts of havoc as I knocked trinkets off shelves and discovered just how many hiding places were in her home that she knew nothing about.
But eventually I grew bored with my mayhem and settled in. After all, it was much more pleasant to lie in her lap as she gently scratched a finger under my chin or behind my ears.
She bought me prey to hunt: small, plush targets with long ears and tails that jingled as I smacked them across the hardwood flooring, drawing endless peals of soft, musical laughter from her. She bought me my own bed: a soft, round thing that I sank into effortlessly, kneading sleepily, that she set into the window to absorb the most sunlight. She prepared me my meals just as I liked: a mixture of softer food from a metal container and a harder, crunchier variety from a bag.
And so, at length, I grew to appreciate my master for what she was: if she took care of me so well, it was the least I could do to take care of her in the same manner.
She made it difficult to do, however. She did not care for my offerings of plump mice and half-dead insects. She would remove me from the click-clacking metal rectangle when I stood in front of it to groom her hairless face. She did not appreciate my dipping a paw in her drinking containers to ensure her water was fresh.
But in the late nights, long after she should have been asleep, I often found her curled up alone on her bed, her mate gone for days and weeks yet again. And she would weep with such force as to shake her entire body, making her breath rattle hoarsely in her chest, lonelier than any two-leg had any need to be. They were a social type, I learned, though I could not for the lives of me understand why. But she missed her mate—missed any type of contact, really, from what I could tell. She scarcely even smelled of him anymore, for how often he was gone. She was happy when he was here, and sad when he was not. How her mate did not understand this himself, I have no idea.
So I tried to soothe my master as best as I could when she wept, climbing into her lap and bunting my face up against hers. She would grasp me too tightly in her arms, slicking my fur with tears, and I would ignore the discomfort to purr thunderously in her ear and knead insistently at her shoulder. She could cry if she wanted to, but she did not need to feel lonely, because I was still here with her. It always seemed to help, as she would eventually loosen her grip and stop crying to instead scratch my ears and kiss the top of my head repeatedly, murmuring soft, relieved nothings against my fur.
Those were the nights I spent in the two-legs' bed rather than my own, stretched out on my master's chest, purring softly to soothe her to sleep. And I wished, perhaps selfishly, that my master could find a mate who did not leave her so lonely.
III.
I recognized the visitor by scent before I ever saw her. The sharp, clean scent that clung to her white coat and blonde hair was more familiar to me than the scent of even my master's mate: it was the same scent that so often clung to my master herself when she returned from her days out.
I decided immediately that I much preferred the visitor to my master's mate. Around her, the dark grief that weighted down my master's shoulders in the still of the night seemed to finally be gone, allowing her to be light and happy again. She smiled more, and I got to hear her laugh again. What's more, the visitor didn't try to needlessly caress or manhandle me, either, preferring to admire me from a distance. Oh yes, I vastly preferred this female to my master's mate.
The feeling, I noted quickly, seemed to be a reflection of my master's. The more frequently her mate was away, the more frequently I saw the blonde visitor in our home, smiling and laughing and lightening my master's pain with her presence alone. I could easily tell, of course, that the visitor was incredibly fond of my master, herself: I never saw two-legs smile so much at another unless they intended to court, for one, but I could additionally catch the smell of desire bathed over her skin when I dropped my jaw to scent them.
So I was unsurprised when, after a particularly lengthy absence of my master's mate, I caught my master straddling the clean-smelling visitor on the couch, her fingers combing gently through the visitor's blonde hair as their mouths met. The visitor had appeared surprised for a moment before relaxing against my master, her hands stroking softly, soothingly over my master's back and sides.
When they inevitably retired to the bedroom together, giggling and caressing one another, I simply made myself comfortable in my own bed, stretching mightily before flipping over onto my back, purring to myself, content that my master was in the very capable hands of her new mate.
Why she continued to live with the previous one, allowing him to share her bed and living space while her new mate only stayed in his absence, I could not fathom. But I trusted in her judgement. If it brought her her new mate, who made her so much happier, she clearly knew what she was doing.
IV.
I did not understand when my master disappeared for two long weeks.
I spent most of the first week wandering the empty apartment and yowling for her return to no avail. Her mate stopped by daily, looking more and more haggard with each visit, to ensure I was fed. She did not know how to prepare my food, and I glared disdainfully each time she provided only the dry pellets in my bowl, but I nibbled reluctantly at the food anyway. She was trying, I supposed, and she was doing far better than the male who still supposedly lived here, as he had not returned even once.
She wept often, far harder and more frequently than my master ever had, and it alarmed me to watch. She wept until it seemed she had no more tears to give, curled in on herself on the floor, my master's sweatshirt clutched in a white-knuckled grip, giving dry, shuddering sobs until her voice tore and gave out. I tried to offer her comfort as best as I could, being my master's mate, purring and rubbing myself against her, but she couldn't even tear herself away from my master's shirt long enough to notice my efforts. I did not understand that either.
I did not understand when my master returned again, pale as death and stinking of blood and metal.
She did not seem to be herself. She was frequently confused—often alarmed at minor things. She forgot to feed me until I patiently reminded her by mewing and batting my bowl across the floor. The male fretted over her constantly, often earning her deep ire, and I could not understand why her preferred mate was not present to care for her instead. The few times my master left the house, she returned carrying the sharp, clean scent of her mate, but I did not see her once.
She reached out for me once, and I felt my hackles raise in alarm. She smelled wrong, all sorts of wrong, like someone had stripped her entire scent from her skin and doused her in copper and titanium and in my panic I growled and swiped at her. She'd gasped, jerking back her scratched hand, eyes wide with hurt. I'd tried to console her with soft purrs and mews, but she looked too distant to notice. The blood on her hand, I saw, was nearly black. She did not appear to notice that either.
I did not understand when, after only a week, my master rose one night, stinking of sweat and copper and titanium and terror, and taking the knife from her bedside drawer, drew it across the male's throat in bed. He scarcely had time to wake, breath gurgling messily from his ruptured throat, before he expired again, blood dribbling from his lips, his eyes wide in shock.
The scene was a mess, and for the first time in my life I feared my master and hid beneath the couch, growling cautiously as she passed by. She turned and looked at me for a long moment. My hackles raised. There was no emotion on her face. Her eyes, now the same bright gold as my own, stared at me, unfeeling. I hissed—spat—yowled. This was not my master, though she wore her face. She needed to get out.
The not-master blinked once, turned, and left as silent as the grave. I continued yowling and screaming after her, as the wrong-wrong- wrong scent of blood and terror and sweat and metal slowly left with her.
It was not many hours before the door was broken in, and men stinking of oil and steel burst into the flat. I hid under the bloodsoaked bed, growling and hissing at those who came near. One of them kicked at me, and I swiped at him with a yowl for his trouble. Another huffed something about strays contaminating a crime scene, and I screeched at him, claws and teeth bared as he tried to grab for me.
I would not be chased out of my own home like this. My master might come back. She would fret dreadfully if she could not find me. So I hid from them, and growled and snapped and swiped whenever they came near.
When I finally woke from my latest hiding spot under the couch, it was to the comforting too-clean smell of my master's mate. I have never felt such relief. I darted to her, yowling unhappily, and she looked startled at my appearance. Her soft blue eyes welled up, and she knelt, reaching for me with trembling hands. She looked haunted. As though she had seen something truly horrifying.
She held me carefully, whispering my name over and over against my head as her hand absentmindedly stroked over my neck and back. I purred softly, hesitantly, wondering if she knew where my true master had vanished off to.
I did not understand when, finally, she left, and took me with her.
V.
I was not pleased with my master's mate's quarters, and I ensured that she was made well aware of this by spraying her shoes, her couch, her bed, and several piles of clothes she neglected to put away in a timely fashion. She cursed and fussed at me each time, but seemed too tired to do much more than wash the scent and stain off again.
I was not pleased with her preparation of my food—she still only placed the dry pieces into my bowl and nothing more—but I supposed she made up for it by slipping me scraps of meats and cheeses from her own plates. Indeed, I quickly grew fat on her bizarre diets, though she seemed unfazed by my weight gain.
I was not pleased with her bizarre schedules that left me alone for hours and hours at a time, and I was not pleased that she couldn't for the life of her keep a feeding schedule for either of us.
I was not pleased that she did not bring my master home to us. I was not pleased that she spent the scant time she should've been sleeping either working or weeping. I was not pleased when, eventually, my master's scent faded from the house, but for a few articles of clothing here and there that her mate would clutch to her chest for security.
I was not pleased with the arrangement in the slightest.
But she seemed to be in enough agony that I finally, reluctantly, gave her a break. She seemed to sleep better with me purring in her ear, anyway.
VI.
As the years continued marching on, I grew accustomed to the scents of my new master's quarters: the sharp, clean scent she always wore permeated everything, but there were other interesting scents around too.
The light, sweet scent of the candle she liked to leave on a warmer in the living room. The scent of something half-burned from the kitchen, on the occasions she tried to cook. The myriad of odd synthetic and biological scents that clinged to my master's white coat whenever she brought it home.
The comforting, familiar scent of my old master eventually faded away entirely. This seemed to deeply distress my new master, who would still clutch her mate's clothes to her chest in a panic, inhaling deeply as if to try to detect some long-gone scent of her, but from the agonized look on her face I knew we were both well aware that there was nothing left anymore.
So imagine my surprise when my master came home one day, smelling of her usual sterility, the scent of metal and blood clinging to her coat—
And on her hands, a long-forgotten lightly floral scent.
VII.
When she came by, I almost didn't recognize her for how long it had been.
She was far paler than I ever recalled her being—outright bluish purple at the extremities. Thinner than I remembered, too—but even more muscular. Her hair was as long and shiny as it had ever been. Her eyes were just how they were when I last saw them. Liquid gold, mostly blank, somewhat confused.
They cleared when they saw me. Widened in shock.
"You kept him," she mumbled, staring at me. I regarded her warily. There was still the stink of blood and metal on her, even if it was mostly covered up by the sharp, too-clean scent my current master so often wore, even if there was a soft, faintly floral scent in the background.
"Of course," my master said softly. She knelt down and reached out for me. I gave her a look, wondering why she wanted me so close to that not-quite-right former master of mine.
"Why?"
My master looked up at her with a smile, but even I could feel the sadness radiating off of her in thick, overwhelming waves. I reluctantly crept closer, if only to rub my cheek into the tips of her fingers. "He was the only thing I had left of yours," my master said.
A watery sound escaped my former master and I backed up hastily, my fur bristling warily. Those unnaturally golden eyes, a mirror of my own, were wet with a sheen of tears. As I watched her, tensed to bolt at any moment, one or two of them crept down her pale cheek. I simply stared at her, my tail thrashing anxiously behind me, my ears twitching back against my head. My master looked distressed at my reaction as well, though I couldn't understand it. The two-leg standing here was not my former master. She was not my master's mate. She wore her face, but she was different. She did not look the same. She did not smell the same. It was not her. I didn't understand.
"He's afraid of me," the not-master female said softly.
"It's just been a long time," my master told her gently. "He'll come around."
VIII.
She paid daily visits, always at my master's side.
As the days ticked by, she began to resemble my former master more and more. Her skin took on a normal tone. The overwhelming scent of metal and death bled off. Her eyes stayed the same.
Most frequently, she spent the visits with only my master: leaning against her, embracing her, trying to stay as close to my master as possible, seemingly bathing herself in my master's scent. I watched them warily. I was still uncertain of her, but my master seemed to be responding to her in much the same was as I recalled her responding to her mate so long ago.
When I strolled into the living room one day to find the female atop my master, their mouths locked together as their hands fearfully caressed one another, I simply paused, blinking curiously up at them. The scents were not-quite-right, the visuals just as not-really-correct, but they were close enough that it made me hesitate. The sight, the sounds, the scents, it was all... familiar. They seemed so similar to my master with her former mate, my own former master, but it was still... it wasn't quite right.
How peculiar.
I left to go stretch out in my half-shredded bed in the kitchen. I was not asleep long before footsteps on the tile floor roused me again, and I looked up with a sleepy little chirp.
The visitor was there, watching me with a soft gaze, a wistful smile. "She's let you get fat," she murmured softly before going to the pantry. I settled back down, eyes closing, intent on ignoring her.
My ears pricked again at the sound of a can opener.
It had been so long since I'd had my food prepared correctly, with the soft food mixed with the kibbles, that I entirely ignored her careful strokes down my spine as I devoured my bowl in one sitting. When I finally lifted my head from the bowl and noticed her touch, I quickly darted out of reach again, staring at her. My ears swiveled forward and back. Hesitant. Uncertain.
She smiled at me, looking tired and sad and hopeful all in one go, and knelt on the floor nearby, turning her head away from me.
She held out a hand, palm upturned, wiggling her fingers just slightly.
I approached to give them a sniff.
Vaguely metallic in the background, but something floral at the forefront, and with a sharp, clean scent somewhere in the middle. My whiskers brushed her skin as I crept warily closer and she laughed softly at the tickle, finally turning her head to look at me.
Oh. I remembered her now. This was her after all. This was my master, the one who picked me up. The one who kept me for so long.
I blinked slowly up at her, and a soft purr rumbled in my chest.
IX.
With the pair now safely sequestered in each other's arms, no longer in pain, no longer weeping, no longer fearful, it seemed that they no longer had much use for me, though they continued to care for me in every way regardless.
Nonetheless, I remained with them, my two mated masters.
It seemed they both slept better with me purring softly in their ears anyway.